Surrounded by dust, smoke, fumes, shouts, and the roar of unmuffled exhaust, Cameron Argetsinger gripped the wheel of his bright red MG TC. He was waiting for the green flag to drop--or perhaps the other shoe. In six short months, he'd helped transform his little sandbox into Venice Beach, his sandlot into Yankee Stadium. The country roads of the upstate New York hamlet he called home had become the streets of Le Mans, a biscuit reincarnated as a brioche. If it were at all possible while wearing driving gloves, Argetsinger would have pinched himself.

Twenty-two other gleaming automobiles joined Argetsinger's roadster on the starting grid, wheel to wheel and two abreast along Franklin Street, the main route through Watkins Glen. In celebrity, the drivers were second only to their cars. There was George Weaver in a Maserati, Briggs Cunningham in a Bu-Merc, Frank Griswold in an Alfa Romeo coupe, the Collier brothers (Sam and Miles) from Florida in matching supercharged MGs. Famed New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams was on hand, too, driving a Mercedes-Benz, but he let it be known that his competitive potential came only in the form of "animate scenery." He was there for a speedy drive; the others had come for a road race, the first ever in the area--indeed, the first that many of the drivers and most of the spectators had ever witnessed.

Until that sunny autumn afternoon fifty years ago, Watkins Glen had been best known for its salt mines and the magnificent gorge at the center of its state park. Twenty-five miles west of Ithaca and slightly less populated than today's typical Cornell freshman class, it was an unassuming little village, the county seat of one of the smallest counties in the state. It oozed serenity and charm; if somebody outside of the region knew of it, that usually meant they either had a cousin there or a Cornell degree. But in early October 1948, the streets of Watkins Glen were lined with spectators, thousands of them, standing three and four deep, leaning out of windows, balancing on rooftops, straining to get a glimpse of the larger-than-life men in their louder-than-thunder machines.

It was a bit like staging a ballet in a barn. The pit area was set up on Franklin Street, behind the start-finish line, which lay opposite the Schuyler County Courthouse. The cars were paddocked in the parking lot of Watkins Glen State Park, and inspected wherever they happened to be stored. (Starting the next year, they would be inspected at the Grand Prix Technical Center, otherwise known as Lester Smalley's garage.) But when the green flag dropped, it signaled more than just the start of the race. It was the beginning of a town's newfound identity, something that would distinguish this hamlet on a hill by a lake from all other hamlets on hills by lakes and would make Watkins Glen a name familiar around the globe, from the dirt roads of Alabama to the streets of Brazil.

Although it is likely that road racing arrived with the construction of the second automobile, the first publicized race in the States was a jaunt through Chicago on Thanksgiving Day in 1895, the winner averaging 7.5 miles per hour. Within a few years, racing circuits emerged in places as disparate as Savannah, Santa Monica, Milwaukee, and Long Island. But while the sport continued to increase in popularity in Europe after World War I, it was virtually abandoned stateside in favor of oval track racing--hit the gas and turn left. By the time Cam Argetsinger was born in 1921, American road racing seemed en route to extinction.

Yet Argetsinger, JD '54, was raised with a passion for the two elements that would rekindle the pastime: fast cars and the roads of upstate New York. His mother, Louise Williams '11, was a native of Montour Falls, the village adjoining Watkins Glen. His father, J. C. Argetsinger '05, JD '07, came from nearby Burdett. In 1917, the Argetsingers moved to Youngstown, Ohio, where J. C. became vice president and general counsel of a steel company. They lived there the rest of their lives, but young Cam spent every summer in Schuyler County, visiting his grandparents and, after his father purchased a farmhouse by Seneca Lake, visiting his summer home.

J. C. Argetsinger collected classic Packards and instilled in his son a hankering for horsepower. "He always had fast cars, and he liked to drive them fast. I inherited it, I guess," says Argetsinger. "My father and I both liked to get from Point A to Point B in the fastest possible time--in a safe manner, of course--without getting arrested." By the time he was twenty, Argetsinger was co-owner of a Packard dealership in Warren, Ohio, a role interrupted by a three-year stint as an enlisted man during World War II. With the Allied victory came myriad changes in American society. Prosperity was possible, and the modern world was speeding into focus. Uncle Milty had just inaugurated the television boom with "Texaco Star Theatre." Jackie Robinson was burning up the National League. Marlon Brando was Stanley Kowalski. The war's end also meant the return of thousands of servicemen from Europe, who brought with them an acquired taste for unusual automobiles. Sports cars, they called them, and they anxiously waited for the first postwar models to reach this side of the Atlantic.

Argetsinger hadn't served overseas, but his ardor for the automobile was as strong as ever. In 1947, at about the time he enrolled in Youngstown University, he heard about a fledgling organization called the Sports Car Club of America. It was just a small group of enthusiasts at first, but over the next decade it would evolve into a full-blown subculture. To the people who poured their hearts and souls (and occasionally their last dollar) into Allards, Austin-Healeys, and Aston-Martins, the sports car was more than its traditional definition, a vehicle suitable for competition or utilitarian purposes. It was a toy, a mechanical work of art, a bragging right, a means of resisting conformity, a connoisseur's choice, a companion, a state of mind.

"A good sports car, like any other piece of good sporting equipment, should be something you can work up a real affection for," said auto writer Tom McCahill. "You may even have a pet name for it, and you may even talk to it when you're alone, because you and the sports car, out on the road, are a couple of pals together, and if you're incapable of working up such affection over a jewel-like piece of machinery, you'd be far better off with a Buick."

The sports car was a means of picking up your favorite lady, your favorite bottle of scotch, or a cloud of dust. It was only natural that the latter would translate into a competitive yearning, a willingness to risk life and limb just to go faster than everybody else. The time was ripe for a step forward in American racing. Argetsinger was ahead of the curve, and Watkins Glen provided the dust. "It would have happened someplace soon because people were ready for it," says his wife, Jean, his former high school sweetheart. "But it happened here because of him." One had to own a sports car to be a full-fledged member of the SCCA, so Argetsinger bought an MG TC. Nineteen-inch wheels, leather upholstery, an elaborate instrument panel, four speeds forward . . . most Americans had never seen anything like it, let alone a competition featuring it. But Argetsinger had visions of sports cars scuffling in Schuyler County, in part, he says, because "I wanted to race in it myself."

During the winter evenings of 1947-48, he sat on the floor of his living room in Youngstown laying out a proposed Watkins Glen course with magazines and toy cars. By spring, it was time to unveil his plan. He first approached Arthur Richards, a flamboyant reporter for the Elmira Star-Gazette, who presented the idea to Don Brubaker, president of the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce. The image of goggle-wearing drivers, their scarves flying in the breeze, appealed to the former. The notion of an early autumn race extending the tourist season well beyond Labor Day appealed to the latter. "By the end of April, Arthur wrote me," Argetsinger recalls, "and he said, 'Bring on the cars.' "

At the end of May, practically the entire membership of the Sports Car Club of America journeyed to the Indianapolis 500. During a pre-race dinner, Argetsinger, still only twenty-seven, presented his idea to the membership and received an enthusiastic response. He spent the next four months angling for publicity, participants, and permission. As general chairman of the event, he mobilized the entire business community and attracted drivers by christening the race "The Watkins Glen Sports Car Grand Prix." The name, conjuring images of racing-built cars and international governing bodies, was chosen with care. "We knew what it meant, what a Grand Prix should be. We took a little poetic license," says Argetsinger. "And Watkins Glen didn't want this to be a flash in the pan any more than I did, so we called it the 'first annual' at the beginning. I was highly optimistic."

Argetsinger had to approach nine different authorities for permission to race on the public roads, including the Village of Watkins Glen, the adjacent townships of Reading and Dix, the County of Schuyler, the State of New York, the Finger Lakes State Park, the State Police, and the State Department of Public Works (which mandated the placement of several dozen ignored "No Passing" signs along the course).

And then there was the New York Central Railroad. At one point along Argetsinger's course the cars were forced to cross a set of railroad tracks. The New York Central was not inclined to stop its service for a handful of daredevils, so up until a week before the competition the racers were going to have to come to an absurd stop on every lap before crossing the tracks. But Watkins Glen Mayor Alan Erway, who tooled around in a motorized wheelchair himself, came to the rescue. He convinced one of his close friends, railroad superintendent Frank Chase, to alter the schedule for the day of the race. October 2, 1948, which saw the rebirth of road racing in America, became The Day They Stopped the Trains.

It was a perfect autumn afternoon, clear and crisp with a light breeze, as the twenty-three sports cars sat in the center of Watkins Glen surrounded by four times the village's population. There was electricity in the air, sparked by the heady aroma of motor oil. Two races were scheduled. The first, which they decided to call the Junior Prix, was a four-lap, 26.4-mile "qualifier" to determine starting positions for the Grand Prix (actually, they drew names from a hat). At 12:30 p.m., SCCA member Nils Mickelson waved the green flag to start the first-ever race in Watkins Glen.

Argetsinger had fashioned a remarkable circuit out of the rolling countryside--6.6 miles of road, four different driving surfaces, and more than 1,000 feet in elevation change encircling the famous gorge. The drivers started south up Old Corning Hill, veered west at Townsend Road Corner, and roared up a steep tree-lined passageway through a seventy-five-mile-per-hour White House "S" curve at the top of the hill. They then thundered across a 100-mile-per-hour straightaway and under a railroad overpass, before slowing slightly to negotiate gentle right and left sweeps. They braked and shifted at School House Corner and began an abrupt descent into the state park and White's Hollow. Three miles from the starting line, they crossed what is now known as Cornett's Stone Bridge, an homage to Denver Cornett, who rolled his MG into the creek on the second lap of the Junior Prix.

The cars then went up and out of the hollow into Archy Smith's Corner, home to a dairy farmer, where the surface turned from macadam to dirt and where Argetsinger blew a tire on the third lap, leaving him one lap short of finishing the Junior Prix. From there, the drivers sped east down a dusty straightaway and leapt over the railroad crossing before zooming past Friar's Curve, where the land on both sides was owned by the Franciscan Brothers. The racers then headed back into the village, flashing through a sweeping downhill stretch of cement known as Big Bend, where the unfocused driver enjoyed a breathtaking view of Seneca Lake.

As the drivers reached the bottom of the hill, the road angled sharply left and then right again onto Franklin Street and the finish line. At this turn, on the final lap of the Junior Prix, Bill Milliken, chairman of the technical committee for the race and a director of flight research at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, was running third until he found himself upside down in his Bugatti. He crawled out grinning; he was the fellow in charge of race safety. The intersection has since been known as Milliken's Corner. Frank Griswold, who had taken over the lead from GeorgeWeaver midway through the second lap, won the Junior Prix with an average lap speed of 64.5 miles per hour. In the Grand Prix, the Pennsylvania native was only slightly slower, leading from start to finish in the fifteen-car, eight-lap competition. As in the qualifying race, Briggs Cunningham and MG driver Haig Ksayian placed second and third, respectively. The Collier brothers were fourth and fifth. Argetsinger's red MG finished ninth.

That evening, at the awards banquet, Jean Argetsinger invited everybody in attendance down to the lake for breakfast the next morning. It was that kind of atmosphere, a clubby group of friends spending a Saturday afternoon tooling around town. But it soon became clear that when they stopped the trains in the Glen, they had started something big. The Second Annual Watkins Glen Grand Prix roared through town 350 days later. This time, an estimated 20,000 spectators were on hand and three-time Indy 500 champion Wilbur Shaw was the honorary starter. Miles Collier won the Grand Prix, now expanded to a fifteen-lap, ninety-nine-mile event, in a Ford-Riley, despite the fact that he couldn't get the car started until the race was a minute old. Argetsinger, driving a Bugatti, was snake-bit again, stopping on the second lap with a clogged fuel line.

By 1950, the event had become so popular that it drew as many as a hundred thousand spectators. Argetsinger, in a Healey-Silverstone, was running third in the Grand Prix before his engine blew. But the race was also the stage for real tragedy. Amid a driving rain, thirty-eight-year-old Sam Collier careened off the road after the railroad underpass and crashed end over end into an apple orchard. He died in a hospital later that day. Argetsinger had lost more than a race; he'd lost a friend. "Auto racing is dangerous. Everybody knew that," he recalls. "But like soldiers, you always think it'll happen to the other guy."

Two years later, it happened to a seven-year-old boy. So many people had converged on Watkins Glen that safety became secondary to spectacle. Restraining ropes were disregarded as eager fans crowded the roadside. On the second lap of the Grand Prix, one of the cars veered off the road and into a group of spectators just past the start-finish line. A dozen people were injured; the boy was killed. The media ran with the story, criticizing the race as "an orgy with thousands of persons traveling thousands of miles to get a glimpse of blood." The insurance carrier refused to issue a policy if the race went through the village, putting an end to Argetsinger's legendary circuit.

As troubled as they were by the accident, race organizers were determined not to allow the demise of an event that had put their town on the map and, thanks to the largesse of race fans who visited, in the money. Argetsinger himself had just enrolled in Cornell Law School and moved his growing family to the house by Seneca Lake. So the race committee found a solution: if they couldn't race through town, they'd race just outside it.

The not-for-profit Grand Prix Corporation was formed, and a smaller, safer, 4.6-mile circuit was created in the adjoining town of Dix. Three years later, the Corporation purchased 550 acres of land adjacent to the second circuit and built a 2.3-mile course at a cost of $200,000. Cornell engineers designed the circuit to imitate the winding country roads that it replaced, and it received high marks for its potential. "This new course," declared the December 1956 issue of Road & Track, "is guaranteed to be a favorite with the crowd."

With the completion of the permanent racetrack, Watkins Glen solidified its position as the capital of American road racing, where even the professionals came to test their mettle. In 1958, the Glen began to attract top international drivers for the Formula Libra, which it hosted for three years. The ultimate validation came in 1961, when the Grand Prix Corporation, with Argetsinger as its executive director, put in a bid to host the U.S. Formula One Grand Prix. By October the world's most prestigious racing series had come to the shores of Seneca Lake.

Over the next two decades, the U.S. Grand Prix became a major event on the international racing calendar. It was the glamorous Grand Prix's folksiest setting, described by Sports Illustrated as "courage and corn pone; sophistication with straw in its teeth; hazard in the midst of hokum." But as the Sixties brought a yen for fast cars to America, they also brought a penchant for youthful demonstration. The Grand Prix at the Glen became a sort of Woodstock with wheels. For an ever-increasing army of college kids who arrived that first weekend in October, it was a chance to, as one observer put it, "brawl and booze and puff on strange weeds against a backdrop of screeching mechanical music." The epicenter of the movement was The Bog, a mud pit just outside one of the tunnels leading to the racetrack's infield, where a drunken mob once incinerated a Greyhound bus.

The Bog was eventually bulldozed into submission, and it wasn't the only Glen tradition to go. In 1969, Argetsinger decided Watkins Glen racing had evolved to such a point that it needed to be run more like a business, and so he made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the raceway for $1.3 million. Disappointed at his fellow villagers' refusal to sell, he resigned from his paid position as executive director and moved to Midland, Texas, where he accepted a leading role in the attempted expansion of Chaparral Cars, Inc. "What, Watkins Glen without Cam Argetsinger?" wondered the New York Times. "It seems unthinkable." Argetsinger moved to Denver in 1972, joining the SCCA as director of professional racing and then executive director. He would return to Schuyler County and his private law practice in Montour Falls five years later. By then, much had changed on the hill by the lake.

The decade had a promising beginning, as the Grand Prix Corporation borrowed $3.5 million in 1971 to expand the course and a wide variety of competition was soon traversing it, including the Can-Am, Trans-Am, Six Hours, Formula 5000, and CART Indy Car Series. But promotional problems plagued the Glen. The Bog, along with the memory of gridlock caused by more than half a million fans converging for a rock concert in 1973, prompted families to stay away. The deaths of a pair of Grand Prix racers raised new safety concerns. Some in the racing world felt the track was outdated for Grand Prix purposes. By 1976, Formula One officials decided to conduct a second U.S. Grand Prix in Long Beach, California. The Glen's version survived only another four years, and the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation filed for bankruptcy in 1981.

Over the next two years, the track fell into disrepair, hosting only a few SCCA events. The capital of road racing had run out of gas. But then a minor miracle started the resurgence of the Glen. In a deal closed in Argetsinger's law office, Corning Enterprises (a subsidiary of Corning Glass Works) purchased the track for $1.45 million in early 1983 and formed Watkins Glen International. It was a partnership with International Speedway Corporation, which now owns 100 percent of the raceway.

The new ownership brought new life. The track reopened in 1984 and re-entered the national consciousness two years later with the first "Budweiser at the Glen." Since then, the race has been the centerpiece of the raceway's schedule and a regular feature of the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit. Crowds of more than 150,000 fill the facility every August, watching the likes of Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon vie for purses of over $1 million in one of only two road races on the senior stock car schedule. It and the rest of the race weekends have had a lasting impact on the community. Shops, motels, and restaurants are full, the waitress can pay the dentist, the dentist can pay the plumber--there is a ripple effect long after the motors have died and the throngs have disappeared. Fast cars are to the Glen what baseball is to Cooperstown.

Stroll through the village today, and it's impossible to ignore the residue of that fateful Saturday fifty years ago. At the main intersection, joining Franklin Street and Fourth Street, an enormous checkered flag is painted on the pavement. Scattered throughout the business district are race memorabilia shops, where you can buy model cars, decals, key chains, T-shirts, and decades-old Grand Prix programs. Down the road a bit is the newly constructed Watkins Glen Motor Racing Research Library, where serious scholars and casual browsers can probe the history of speed and the people who chased it. Engraved along the village's Walk of Fame are the names of men who excelled at accelerating--Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Richard Petty, Bobby Allison.

The annual NASCAR event may not have the international cachet of the Grand Prix, but the glory of the Glen is now as familiar to a new generation of racing fans as Daytona or Charlotte or Talladega. It is another example of how racing has put the village on the national and international map. Mention Watkins Glen to someone in Monaco or Muscle Shoals, and there's a good chance they'll respond, "Ah, Emerson Fittipaldi" or "Oh, Geoff Bodine."

Funny, though, that they may not know Cameron Argetsinger. After all, he never actually won a race at the Glen, just like Abner Doubleday never rapped a base hit. To many, Argetsinger's sons may be more recognizable. His oldest, J. C., now a Schuyler County judge, was commissioner of the International Motor Sports Association for five years. His second son, Michael, raced in Europe for a decade. His third son, Peter, is a former Formula Two English champion.

The seventy-seven-year-old patriarch hasn't raced since 1960, but he can still recall the cars he's owned with the clarity and precision that only comes with affection bordering on obsession. That first Packard in 1935, the fateful MG, the Ardent Alligator, the '53 Jaguar XJ120M, the '56 Mercedes 300SL, the Alfa-Romeo Veloce, the 427 Cobra, the Mustang 325 . . . sixty in all, changing cars more often than most of us change toothbrushes.

And in September--when the Zippo U.S. Vintage Grand Prix wraps up the 1998 race schedule at the Glen and a parade of vintage sports cars gather on Franklin Street for a fiftieth anniversary reenactment of the race that started it all--he expects to be sitting proudly in one of the old classics, a Cadillac-Allard, waiting for the green flag and the opportunity to pick up some speed.

Brad Herzog '90 is a frequent contributor to Cornell Magazine.

Published in Cornell Alumni Magazine. Used by permission.